I had occasion to speak on the telephone to a poet I admire. I told her that I was feeling both weary and wary, and that everything felt hazier and more complicated than before. I’m finding this week tough going, I confessed. I’ve stopped even thinking about “the end”; I’m just trying hard to stay awake, in the moment, and grateful for what I have.
A year ago I used to say things like “when this is all over I’m going to see India and then go to Naples and search the backstreets for the last tincture of my Italian antecedents. I’m going to have my legs waxed and my roots done and go to the cinema. I’m going to change the cat lit. I’m going to have a shocking-pink shellac and a tattoo on my tailbone.”
A year ago we were coming to terms with a virus; now it feels as if we’re coming to terms with a blinding loss of confidence, of autonomy, of certainty. It seems like we’re being challenged to relinquish our fantasy of control and accept our own reckless unpredictability and vulnerability.
'Hold on for the vernal equinox,' the poet said when I confessed my lassitude, and I was grateful for her absolution
“I don’t think about this being over any more,” I said to the poet. “I’m not even terribly sure what over is.”
“The vernal equinox is almost here,” the poet – herself not immune to these injured times – said lightly.
Tomorrow is the vernal equinox, marking the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. The sun will appear to be directly over the equator, and day and night will be of equal length. It is the springboard from which the days will grow longer until the summer solstice, in June.
As I’m writing this, a thin white sun is electrifying a bank of thick clouds, and hailstones the size of small dogs are hurtling down on the kitchen skylights. Half of the sky appears purple, clotted with rain; the other half is a ghostly, wishy-washy white, as if God had employed a lousy house painter who’d left the job half-finished.
“Hold on for the vernal equinox,” the poet said when I confessed my lassitude, and I was grateful for her absolution.
Any old common-or-garden mythology primer will tell you that, despite the evidence of our limited eyesight, our woodlands and glades are knee-deep in cavorting 6in fairies. (I have no idea why fairy height is so specific. I worry for the stunted little pixies left at home peeling the potatoes because they didn’t make the 15.24cm.)
Where was I? Yep! Legions of those full-height fairies, normally up to their fairy ears taking care of the forest, or communicating with water, or helping injured animals, or soothing storm-damaged trees when they’re not jinxing satnavs, will take the night of the vernal equinox off. This Saturday, when the sun will rise exactly due east and set exactly due west, those groovy sprites will party like it’s 2019, scattering rose petals, necking bottles of Jägermeister, snorting trails of pollen and boogying on down in the bougainvilleas.
Join a negative and a positive statement about yourself together and celebrate your internal equinox by shouting them out loud: 'I'm a begrudging old bag, but I'm reliable!'
The following morning, any mere mortal, out walking in the wood with the family mutt, who happens upon an extravagantly coloured rose petal, or a really, really, really tiny little Ugg boot, or maybe a teeny-tiny packet of cigarette papers, will be guaranteed to know happiness for the rest of their days.
There are other ways to mark the equinox, of course. Indeed there’s plenty of psycho-glossy-magazinical advice around on using the equinox as a time to embrace both our dark and our light sides, to learn to celebrate our hidden shadow selves during this time of balance and harmony.
Here, for example, is an equinoxical exercise for your enlightenment. First, stand up. Then think of the characteristic you’d most hate to have applied to you. Greed? Jealousy? Miserliness? Then personify it and say it aloud 10 times: “I am greedy, I am greedy, I am greedy…” Et cetera.
Now think of something good about yourself: maybe you’re a great listener, maybe you make people laugh, maybe your pastry pies never have a soggy bottom. Join the two statements together, negative and positive, and celebrate your internal equinox by shouting both your shadow self and your light-filled self out loud: “I’m a begrudging old bag but I’m reliable! I’m a covetous cretin but the generosity of my gin measures is legendary!”
You’ll get the hang of it. Sure, what else have you to be doing on yet another lockdown Saturday night?